The Shadow Fixer Read online

  “Really?” She blinked. “I didn’t think cops would do anything about psionic stuff.”

  “We do.”

  “Awesome. Really? I can’t wait to see the look on this dickbag’s face when you guys show up.”

  “Yeah. Wish I could be there, but… ugh. Running myself thin. Spirits aren’t usually this active or I’d look into it myself for you.”

  “Cool. Umm, so… this ghost?”

  “Gone.” Kirsten sighed. She didn’t really regret destroying a ghost who tried to kill random people, but any obliteration bothered her to a point. “Since you sent me the image, I can find you if need be. Shouldn’t be much of a need to considering the spirit’s dead. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt you who died within the past six months?”

  The girl shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Okay. Sorry for the disturbance. You can resume the rest of your day.” Kirsten looked around at a reasonably calm mall concourse. “Dorian, is there something going on here I’m not seeing?”

  “Nothing I can feel.”

  “Thanks again.” The teen walked off, little decorative chains on her heeled boots clinking. Since it appeared calm up here, she jogged to a down elevator.

  “Is it me or is the young lady rather casual about nearly being thrown from a two-story balcony?” Dorian watched her walk off.

  “She most likely doesn’t understand how much danger she’d been in.” Kirsten exhaled, then headed for an elevator tube going down. “This is the second spirit I destroyed in one or two hits. First the one at the Funzone, then this guy.”

  “Definitely strange.”

  “Both of them”—she hopped off the elevator on the second floor—“attacked kids. Definitely added some emotion to the lash, but hardly the angriest I’ve ever been. You’ve seen it react to extreme emotions before, the cord gets brighter and wider. Didn’t do it here, but they both obliterated in a single hit. Ghosts new enough for their sense of identity to be that weak should not be able to make a cobweb twitch, much less throw people around.”

  “Hmm.” Dorian shifted his jaw side to side while thinking. “Something is going on here we haven’t run into before. If you think the spirit responsible for the hovercar crash is the reason other ghosts are going crazy, maybe he or she has some ability to give them temporary power?”

  “Umm. Never heard of anything like it before.”

  Dorian gestured at her. “Like I said… something we haven’t run into.”

  Their conversation about ghosts quieted as they neared the tall cyberganger, a pair of Division 1 cops, both kids who went flying over the barrier, and their parents. The boy held both of his parents’ hands, standing between them, still looking freaked out. Next to them, the little girl koala-clung to her father, though appeared outwardly calmer than the boy.

  Kirsten approached.

  “We don’t know for a fact either spirit targeted children specifically,” said Dorian, walking beside her. “Might’ve just been the closest victims. Besides, kids take less energy to throw.”

  “Not funny,” muttered Kirsten.

  “Wasn’t trying to be. They weigh less.”

  The cyberganger spoke to the Division 1 cops in a British accent, explaining how he’d noticed the little girl go flying off the balcony and rushed over to help. Neither officer appeared particularly happy to hear him admit to having high grade speedware, but they also didn’t give him a hard time about it. Speedware wasn’t illegal, but having it tended to cast a cloud of suspicion over a person. Few people spent the hundred thousand or more credits on it purely for personal protection.

  Wonder if he’s undercover… street punks can’t usually afford that stuff.

  “Oy, you get the bastard?” asked the ganger, upon noticing Kirsten standing there.

  “Yeah. He won’t be bothering anyone else.”

  Both cops went wide-eyed the way people usually looked at Division 9 operatives.

  “I didn’t kill anyone.” Kirsten folded her arms. “The suspect was already dead. A spirit. I’m Div 0, not Nine.”

  “Ahh,” said the officer on the left.

  His partner smiled. “Then this one’s all yours. Have fun.”

  The Division 1 officers waved and hurried off.

  “Wow. They’re not calling you insane.” Dorian blinked. “Impressive.”

  “A pair of Div 1 officers stationed at 29P wouldn’t care what kind of crazy story gets them out of dealing with an Inquest. They’re happy to believe in ghosts if it means they have one less case to work.”

  Dorian chuckled.

  “Oi?” asked the cyberganger. “Who are ya talkin’ to?”

  “Another ghost.” She took a deep breath and looked at the two kids. “Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah,” muttered the boy.

  The girl merely stared at her, refusing to let go of her father.

  She smiled at the ganger. “Awesome job, man. Okay, everyone please bear with me. I need to collect some basic info. Then I’ll answer all your questions.”

  “Whoa, you believe in ghosts?” asked the ganger.

  “You can say that.” She chuckled. “Not too often I meet someone else who does until something like this happens.”

  “My dead buddy showed up in my apartment last night, talkin’ for hours.” He exhaled. “Dude died over a year ago. Thought someone hacked my headware, made me see shit, but he knew things only VB would know.”

  Kirsten activated the holo-panel of her armband computer and set up two new Inquest records, one for the old woman, one for the child-thrower. “Something around here is causing ghosts to be more active than normal. Still trying to figure out what.”

  “Wild.” He whistled. “So, I’m not nuts?”

  “Not at all.” Kirsten looked at the parents. “Can you please tell me what you saw?”

  * * *

  Not quite an hour later, Kirsten closed the crime scene.

  The cyberganger, Dox, real name Orson Zheng, confused her by acting so completely ordinary despite his augmentations and outlandish outfit/hair. She had little doubt among his people he behaved in a wildly different manner, but she figured he’d still be a decent sort of guy. Being loud and anti-establishment didn’t automatically make someone a danger to the innocent. She spoke to him for a while after clearing the other two families to leave.

  Unlike most Inquests, there wouldn’t be any need for future court proceedings or even contact. She merely needed to collect as much information as possible for the report, then field a barrage of questions. The parents didn’t quite appear sold on the idea of spirits but accepted the person who tried to hurt their children had been permanently dealt with.

  She added another Inquest for log purposes, regarding Dox’s friend VB. Unimaginatively enough, the dead friend got the nickname from being fond of vibro-blades. He died thirteen months ago due to gang warfare, despite not being in a true gang. Dox and his group regarded themselves as ‘augmentation enthusiasts.’ While they did often gather in groups to hang out, they didn’t consider themselves a gang or do anything more criminal than loiter. However, it didn’t stop another group from mistaking them for a territorial threat.

  Whether or not VB’s return had anything to do with the recent spate of hauntings, she couldn’t tell… but logged it anyway.

  Perhaps overly optimistic, Kirsten headed back outside to the patrol craft. One good thing about most citizens confusing Division 0 with Division 9—no one messed with the car. She hopped in, shut off the emergency lights, and let out a groan of fatigue.

  Dorian materialized in the passenger seat.

  “Sometimes, I’m really annoyed those two Seraphim didn’t give me their PIDs.” Kirsten scowled at her NetMini. “It’s maddening to have questions no one can answer.”

  “Welcome to philosophy. Humans have been pondering unanswerable questions for thousands of years.”

  Kirsten poked the button to power up the drive system. A blast of ion sparks crackled betwee
n the thrusters and plastisteel ground, expanding in a cloud around the patrol craft as she lifted off, ascending vertically until reaching 500 feet. “I’m fine with not understanding stuff. It’s the people getting hurt part I’m worried about.”

  “Spirits have an odd way of going about existing. Very few care to understand anything at all about the experience of being a spirit. Many don’t even process their reality has changed. Some are endlessly stuck in a loop of repeating the same moment in time until someone like you shows up and communicates with them. Others wander aimlessly.”

  “Yeah. I know all that.” She swung the car around to point in the direction of the PAC, then accelerated.

  “I’m saying, not even ghosts understand how ghosts work. You shouldn’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong here.” Dorian scratched at his cheek. “Guess I’m also saying there’s no guarantee finding an old ghost and asking them questions would be any help.”

  A long, frustrated sigh leaked out of her mouth. He had a point. Theodore probably wouldn’t understand how such a young ghost could physically touch people. Worse, her understanding of the situation had plenty of gaps.

  “What if the ghosts aren’t new? Is it possible for those spirits to have, I dunno, gotten their asses kicked recently?”

  “Anything is possible. Question is, what’s probable?” Dorian patted the console. “No spirit with any sense of self-preservation would be caught undead too far from their resting place. I may be more attached than most to this world; however, every time something’s handed me my butt on a plate, I’ve kept my head down until my strength returned.”

  Kirsten idly tapped her fingers on the control sticks. “Maybe they wanted to be destroyed. But, they would have had no way to know I’d be there.”

  “Or did they?” Dorian raised the Eyebrow of Dramatic Pause.

  “Right.” She rolled her eyes.

  He pointed at her. “How many spirits come looking for you? They’ve been doing it since you were six. When a spirit wants something bad enough to focus on it, we have this strange way of understanding.”

  “So, concentrate on wanting to find the reason the ghosts are going crazy.” She smirked.

  “Already trying. Isn’t working too well. Probably due to my lack of emotional investment.” He patted her shoulder. “If I needed to find you because of a desperate need to pass along some critical piece of information to my family, I’d probably wander around seemingly at random but run into you.”

  “Do you think those two ghosts tracked me down specifically to be destroyed in some spectral version of suicide-by-cop? Like, somehow, they knew I get pissed off when people hurt kids so they messed with children on purpose to put me in a state of mind where I wouldn’t hesitate?”

  Dorian raised a hand. “Merely saying it’s a possibility. We already had the old woman at 29P. She’s been around for centuries. Her presence could have attracted other spirits. It might be pure chance the child-tosser showed up when he did.”

  “Like the Lace heads of the ghost world, mindlessly violent and don’t care if they die.” She mulled for a few minutes. “What if they were violent spirits who used so much energy they weakened themselves, or kept getting into fights with other ghosts… and something forced them to go crazy?”

  “Another possibility.”

  “Can a spirit overextend? Like if a ghost isn’t powerful enough to affect solid objects yet, but something drives them to an extreme state where they strain themselves, is it like burning up their essence to do it, weakening themselves?”

  Dorian rubbed his chin. “I haven’t pushed myself so far, but you might be on to something here. I doubt it’s anything a spirit could simply do whenever they wanted. It would take an extreme situation or external influence.”

  “Could explain why they both obliterated so fast… they weren’t old enough to have the power necessary to touch people and burned themselves out.”

  “Reasonable as any other idea.”

  “Hmm.” She set the car on auto-drive and leaned back in the seat, eyes closed. “The old woman said she couldn’t stand the racket. What could be so bad a 300-year-old ghost floats up from the Beneath to escape it?”

  Dorian chuckled. “Have you heard what they’re passing off as music these days?”

  “I’m serious.” She concentrated to make her hand solid to spirits and poked him in the arm. “Some kind of electromagnetic disturbance, maybe? Is someone testing a weird new weapon somewhere and setting off pulses of EM, which are driving ghosts bonkers? Maybe temporarily amplifying them so they can do stuff like older ghosts.” She opened her eyes, stunned by a realization. “What if it’s draining them?”

  “Draining?”

  She turned her head to stare at him. “New ghosts wouldn’t be so casual about throwing people around. They’d be all giddy and impressed with themselves, plus clumsy. Both the ball pit spirit and the thrower ghost behaved like living people in terms of the ease with which they manipulated physical objects—in this case, people.”

  “Okay… so what are you saying?” Dorian drummed his fingers on the door armrest.

  “I’m saying, this phenomenon bothering the ghosts could be a giant drain on power. It’s sucked up so much of their essence, they’re defenseless against the lash.”

  Dorian’s expression shifted to worry. “If true, they would either have to be driven nuts to act irrational or be unaware of their vulnerability. Otherwise, they’d stay in hiding until they weren’t as brittle as an origami swan.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if some external force drove them mad, they wouldn’t necessarily have the mental faculties to be impressed with themselves for being able to grab people.”

  She grumbled mentally. The longer a ghost existed after death, the more energy they gathered. New ghosts could usually withstand anywhere from two to four lashes before obliteration. And, until these last two, other spirits she’d been forced to attack always fell into a visibly weakened state where she knew one more hit would destroy them utterly. In her mind, she pictured ghosts as accumulating ‘armor’ the longer they existed. Harbingers could claim a ghost if they didn’t have armor—or after Kirsten peeled them out of it. The older the ghost, the more strikes from a lash it took to weaken them.

  The ball pit ghost and this one now at 29P had almost been ‘wearing’ negative armor. Either something drained their essence, or they burned it up overextending… driven into a frenzy by something.

  “Curse of Vulnerability,” whispered Kirsten.

  “Last time I checked, vulnerability isn’t a naughty word.”

  She managed a weak smile. “No, I mean it’s like one of the spells from the Monwyn games. Whenever Evan casts it on a tough monster, my arrows do double or triple damage. I was thinking the two ghosts who obliterated right away felt similar. Something made my lash hit them way harder than it ought to have…” She slouched. “Or maybe they simply had their asses kicked earlier.”

  “Lieutenant,” said an adult voice from the console. The holographic head of a young man appeared, seventeen or eighteen. “Are you available to respond to a 21-47 in progress?”

  She squeezed the control sticks hard. “Yes. Send me a nav. What information do we have?”

  “The call originated from Kōtō Fune Sushi.”

  Kirsten blinked. “The hover boat?”

  “Yes, lieutenant. According to my screen, the nav point is in motion.”

  “Dammit! I love them. The guy’s awesome.” Kirsten flicked on the emergency flashers and took over manual control. “On the way.”

  “Copy, lieutenant.”

  * * *

  A green wireframe box appeared on the windscreen display, targeting a tiny, dark speck in the distance.

  The Kōtō Fune Sushi Restaurant flew along a regular route spanning thirty sectors, frequenting districts containing dense concentrations of office towers. It happened to be reasonably close to the PAC, which made it a popular target for National Police Force pe
rsonnel who either started or ended their shifts between three in the afternoon and ten at night—at least anyone who drove a hovercar or patrol craft.

  She slowed below 200 MPH. The dark spot on the windshield grew into a shape resembling an ancient Japanese boat, with certain liberties taken for appearances sake. It seemed unlikely the real boats used so long ago had been so fancy or covered in dragons and phoenixes. Two huge ion thrusters at the back end emitted a sedate cyan glow, nudging the bizarre craft along at about twenty miles an hour—a veritable stationary object compared to hovercars and bots.

  As she so often did when in the mood for dinner, Kirsten pulled the patrol craft up alongside the forty-foot flying boat. Hideo Koizumi, the chef-owner, and his two sons ran around the open part of the mid-deck chasing a manic-eyed man who kept grabbing random objects or food and throwing them overboard. The Koizumis didn’t react to the spirit, only objects moving around.

  “Oh, come on,” yelled Kirsten. “That’s sushi abuse.”

  “Sushi is food abuse,” muttered Dorian. “The ghost is performing a public service.”

  She ignored him and pushed the door upward. “Dorian, take control. Get as close as you can.”

  “Got it.” He melted into the seat. Seconds later, the patrol craft drifted toward the sushi boat.

  Kirsten grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle above her on the left and faced out the door.

  “You’re not seriously considering jumping?” asked Dorian via the speakers.

  “Not if I can avoid it, no.” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, you. Ghost. Stop messing with Mr. Koizumi!”

  The three men on the boat looked at her. The ghost paused to glare at her, about to chuck a wad of fish over the side. A long, olive-drab coat and frumpy clothing gave him the aesthetic of an off-gridder, though he lacked the disheveled hair and layer of dirt.

  Mr. Koizumi recognized her right away and waved. “Miss Wren! You are here? I am having some difficulties at the moment. Police will be here soon for the ghost.”